[potato3732842]

>To quote Solzhenitsyn: "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

This gets invoked way too often by bad people defending bad things that they were warned not to do/support at the time but did/supported anyway because there was something in it for them.

[lo_zamoyski]

Perhaps my wording was misleading. I am not claiming that reform is not possible. I am only claiming that the impulse, especially when it is messianic, that drives some reformers and revolutionaries is delusional, a dead end, and worse, usually involves tyrannical measures and produces more bad than it does good.

Of course, academia could absolutely benefit from certain changes and reforms - I have argued for this myself; education has been derailed by inferior goals - , but the primary place where the work has to happen isn't policy or institutional structure, but ourselves. Indeed, the counterpart to your criticism is that excessive talk of reform is a way of avoiding the difficult and unpleasant work of having to look in the mirror. This does not exclude the need for certain reforms, but unless you get your own house in order first, you will be in poor shape to know what to reform and how.